Here, have a doughnut. It's the chocolate kind, dripping with fudge icing. Try it. Tastes good, huh?
What if you were told it's filled with garbage?
Would you still eat it?
After all, it only has that one bad part.
This analogy is often used to teach teenagers how easy it is to rationalize poor movie choices, how easy it is to become calloused to films that just have one bad part — just that one sex scene or just a few bad words or just a couple of acts of strong violence.
Objectionable material in movies isn't new, but some of the ways parents are choosing to protect their children — and themselves — from what they consider inappropriate are.
Many parents use the familiar movie ratings, overseen by the Motion Picture Association of America, to set guidelines for their children. Others try to screen movies before allowing their children to see them.
"I think (parents) need to be aware a little bit," said South Jordan resident Gerry Graves, a father of two. "I think they need to read reviews and go online and check out what people have said about the movies before they let their children watch them."
Graves is unhappy with the MPAA ratings because movies with violence seem to get an R-rating more often than films with sexual material. "I think that popular culture today is centered a lot around sex and glamour, and I'm not sure that sends the right message out to our children."
Lisa and Rich Saunders of Riverton often watch movies with their kids as a family activity. They don't allow their five children to watch even PG-13 movies, and they often look up movies on Internet sites to find out about content. They have also chosen not to subscribe to cable or satellite television because they say they click past too many objectionable channels while trying to find decent ones.
"The more we are exposed to violence, the more we come to accept it and get used to seeing it," Lisa Saunders said. She also sees modesty as a big issue because she believes TV programs portray immodesty in a way that can lead kids to promiscuity.
Lurlene and Rob Myers of South Jordan take an abstinence approach to the media. Besides choosing not to watch television or most movies — especially those with a rating more harsh than PG — they use an incentive program with their five children, whose ages range from 1 to 12.
When the Myers children finish their chores, they earn "TV bucks." One buck is worth either one TV program or $1, which, Lurlene Myers said, limits the amount of TV they watch each week.
Lurlene and her husband try to limit what their children watch because the media can be so influential. "It shapes how they think," she said, "and what they believe to be true or good. It shapes their values."
A recent study found that the MPAA ratings have been "creeping" over the past decade, allowing more violent and sexually explicit material in films. Conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, the study found that movie ratings for 1,906 films between 1992 and 2003 had grown more lenient in their standards.
"The MPAA appears to tolerate increasingly more extreme content in any given age-based category over time," the study reported. "Movies with the same rating can differ significantly in the amount and type of potentially objectionable content. Age-based ratings alone do not provide good information about the depiction of violence, sex, profanity and other content."
Alan Erb, president of Utah-based CleanFlicks, believes that "what is today rated PG or PG-13 would have been R- or X-rated 20 years ago."
In addition to the usual parental controls available on cable and satellite TV, other options allow parents to filter content.
Utah-based ClearPlay's DVD technology edits movies as they're playing, skipping objectionable scenes and muting swear words according to a set of pre-determined filters, which are stored on the DVD player's hard drive.
 | Deseret Morning News graphic Movie rental optionsRequires Adobe Acrobat. |
A ClearPlay-enabled DVD player, for example, has 14 filter settings you can choose from, including gore, bloody violence, nudity, sex and strong language. It's a parental control option that's available on DVDs. It would be listed on the front of the DVD player along with other features, such as Dolby sound.
A Utah company called MaxPlay makes DVD players that include ClearPlay technology. They are scheduled to be on the market by the end of November (www.max.com). Software from MovieMask and Movie Shield also edit movies on-the-fly. TV Guardian filters out foul language from TV, videos and DVDs.
Two Utah-based video-rental companies, CleanFilms and CleanFlicks, offer customers edited versions of movies, minus the sex, violence and swear words.
The Directors Guild of America filed suit against ClearPlay and CleanFlicks, among other companies, claiming they're violating copyright and infringing on trademark. The case is pending.
Despite the controversy about ways to keep children from being exposed to material their parents consider objectionable, in the end most everyone agrees that such decisions are up to parents.
"It seems that if a parent doesn't want a child to see offensive portions of a particular movie that's available on DVD, or if a person doesn't want to watch such portions himself, there is a simple choice — don't buy or rent the movie," said Marybeth Peters, U.S. Register of Copyrights. She made the statement in her congressional testimony about the "Family Movie Act," legislation that, if approved, would exempt editing software from copyright laws.
(According to Matthew Jarman, ClearPlay's founder, the "Family Movie Act" made it out of committee and was attached to an anti-piracy bill, which will be considered by the entire House.)
"The severity, brazenness (and) intensity of objectionable material continues to increase and become more and more offensive and prevalent, so that it almost appears in virtually every movie," Erb said. That means people must choose between watching what Hollywood produces or watching nothing at all, he said. "They have not provided us with a significant number of choices, and we provide (parents) with more choices."
Protecting children from the media must come from both education and various strategies, said CleanFilms president Chad Fullmer — such as blocking cable channels and not leaving questionable movies in the house that kids might watch on their own. "Parents have to teach their kids good principles because the parents can't always be there" to ensure that they make the right decisions.
"I think it's really important to communicate with your children," Gerry Graves said. "If they feel open, they'll admit to you sometimes if they've watched something or seen something that's inappropriate. If children are afraid to talk to their parents, or don't feel close enough in their parents to confide in them, then that's where you start to have problems.
"I think it's important to stay close to your children and let them know that you control what they watch because you love them, not because you want to lord it over on them."
E-mail: kclayton@desnews.com